In spite of the fact that the radio was chiefly the result of the work of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, when Mussolini seized power in October 1922 Italy was considerably behind other countries in the development of a nationwide broadcasting system.

[5] Realizing that the radio was a powerful tool of control and propaganda, the Fascist government urged companies to build cheap devices for the mass market.

These three-tube tuned radio frequency receivers were manufactured until 1944 in several versions, all sporting the symbol of Fascism, the fascio littorio.

On 22 July 1939, the first television transmitter at the EIAR station came into operation in Rome, which performed a regular broadcast for about a year using a 441-line system that was developed in Germany.

In September of the same year, a second television transmitter was installed in Milan, making experimental broadcasts during major events in the city.

An early signing to the TV station in 1939 was the Italian singer Lia Origoni and a film was made to record her performance.

[13][14] Broadcast in English, and sometimes in Italian, German, and French,[15] the EIAR programme was transmitted to England, central Europe, and the United States.

[14] As the Allied invasion of Italy progressed, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini decided to try to emulate the German radio's Axis Sally broadcasts of Mildred Gillars.

In the summer of 1943, EIAR hired the 30-year-old Rita Zucca with this aim in mind, despite her losing a typing job in 1942 for copying an anti-Fascist pamphlet.

The EIAR, whose Head Office had always been in Turin (far from the front line), continued to broadcast throughout the Italian Social Republic period.

Fascist leader and journalist Ezio Maria Gray replaced Giancarlo Vallauri, the longtime president of EIAR.